Unbloggishly, here we read from the top down - so the month begins here at the top!

Keerella's Blog - stardate September 2008 (1)

Skill Point Day - September 1st

Yesterday's evening efforts by Kee brought in 937 pet points and 62 skill points - the bonus event just about compensated for all the time getting ready for the quiz, and so on! Skill point farming is very slow for her - at level 27, for comparison, this afternoon Enchantrella managed to grab 176 of them on the ground floor of Prokion Temple.

After Enchie's labours, I finally remembered to spend some of her skill points, even with a resurrection scroll triggered carrying over 1000 unused skill points is a bit reckless, when it is easy to "invest" them. In fact she spent 990 in all, and now can process all nine types of raw materials at the top level. Pharmacy, however, will need a couple more levels before it is maxxed out, and then there's still mining, herb-farming, and energy-gathering. Come to think of it, there are probably some general fighting skills that aren't entirely at maximum yet...

After the food break, I tried, as Keerella, to get to Egeha, but Escadalia was still in Randol and I didn't feel like spending 800,000 gold to get there by teleporter. And there was a problem with Zenderfly feeling that I was neglecting her and not teaming up enough, when as wizard and witch we make such a useful team, but we seem to have managed to talk that through later.

Anyway, as Kee couldn't get to Egeha, Kaerella went to the second floor of Maargadum Jail instead - advancing 3% in experience, 248 pet points, and 26 skill points, though she still needs another 42 skill points to learn one of the recently added skills.

After that I contacted Esca again, and found that she had just moved to Egeha - initially I forgot to swap the three "Pierce of Wind" accessories back from Kae to Kee, but once I'd sorted that out, I went off a-bogling. I stayed rather longer than I intended, as DarkPulse101, Captianjack's new mage, wanted to get to level 17 before having her experience frozen for sp-hunting, and thought coming to Egeha and "ks-ing" me for a while would be a nice way to do that. And it was lucky she did join me, as it meant that I was still online when Zenderfly logged back in - I didn't notice the notification that comes up when a guildie logs on, but DP did.

So, Kee added 38 more skill points, and 1019 pet points - a slightly higher figure than usual as when DarkPulse101 was ks-ing I didn't want to use Terra Spear, just normal staff attacks, to give her time to ks - I just used the defensive horse buff, too. 727 skill points won't last me all that long, but Zen assures me there will be other farming opportunities as we go along.

A New Level - September 2nd

I managed to take my level 21 archer Barbarienne to Prokion Temple before lunch - I'd just spent almost all her skill points on Fast Bow Fixing, so it was good to get about 50 more. At her level, a level 23 Orc Fighter gives 4950 skill exp, almost half a skill point - but the ghould and mummies, while giving a bit less, die rather more quickly. If she could solo an Orc Sergeant, I wonder how much skill exp that would be...? Unfortunately the only such orcs on the ground floor seem a bit close together, so finding out would be a bit fraught. The adventure ended slightly early, due to a disconnection.

Vecc, the new mage of our knight Galandorius, was there too, and I did unfortunately slightly "ks" her once - otherwise she was useful to fight next to, as she had a habit of not picking up the cash dropped. I may have plenty of cash at the moment, but I don't like to leave the place looking untidy!

Overnight MistressDomina had been doing well selling items, and, except for a Medal of Honour I'd put in to fill the tenth selling slot, managed to sell out by mid-morning, so she is rich again. It seems as if I increase the price of Item Drop Boosters almost every time, from 350k to 375, 395 to 425k, and now 445,000, and they still sell. I suppose a lot of people are farming the new high-level Shayana map and are using them on the bosses there, there are certainly a lot of Stone of Shadow accessories around - the price has fallen from the old 200 million to half that, or perhaps 85/90 if you look around, but Zenderfly is confident that the price will fall further.

SirDarth went out to Mudika Mine, to keep our supplies of stones up, and was getting towards the end of a second pickaxe by the time he logged out. One of my minor mages headed out for an energy cluster in Dratan; if you don't mind the gathering rate being fairly low there is an energy cluster and some herb bushes quite close to the town's south gate, with only unaggressive Harpies in the way. Unfortunately the connection didn't stay up for her, she got a few energy bits the first time, but the second time she disconnected almost immediately - just going west to the cluster outside Randol's west gate worked a bit better.

After lunch it was time to report for duty with Zenderfly, who was already busy in the Tomb of Theos on Cariae-4 teamed with Sheele. The three of us, plus Itura outside the party supplying healing to the main attacker, which was generally me, did some useful work on the levelling side, before Sheele had to leave us. Zen did Recall in a knight called IamtheJoker, but kicked him from the party before long because he wasn't giving buffs or using skills - I suppose he thought just using his +15 dual swords was enough, but Zen didn't see it that way. It is possible he might have been allowed back in when he promised to change his ways, but Zen was suffering a disconnection at the time.

I didn't get any disconnections in the Tomb, which was a relief after my earlier problems. Zen asked if I minded if Itura came into the actual party to gain three levels, which would enable her to increase her energy and general usefulness - this was fine with me, in fact I have suggested that Itura should do that in the past, and it meant that she could buff both of us without difficulty, though generally the healing was kept on me.

The food break was at 4:30, by which time, as SirDarth had "unfrozen" Kee's experience-gathering, I'd gone up to level 66. I hope I've got this right, it was something I was not entirely clear on, but while up to now it has been possible to wear armour (without penalty) five levels above one's own level, and use a weapon four levels higher than one is, that dispensation is now ending, and while I can wear the level 70 gloves and level 71 jacket and pants now, and will be able to add the level 72 boots and "circlerit" at level 67, this is the last time I'll be able to put armour on before its actual declared level. And my current level 69 staff will have to last me until I am level 73 and can wield the level 73 one.

So the level 75 gloves, well, I can't wear them at all, even with a percentage penalty to my armour rating, trying to put them on just gives me the message "your level is not high enough to wear this." Apparently that will remain like that until I actually reach level 75! And if I can't wear them, I can't upgrade them. So instead of wearing the armour set one above Kee, MistressDomina is now wearing Kee's old set, though not the boots and headgear yet as Kee still needs them.

By the food break Kee had gone up 31.27%, with absolutely no gain in skill points of course, but her faithful drake had at last reached level 42. The break, for me, was very nearly two hours, due to real life stuff, but after that Zen, Itu and I continued for two more hours - there was one dangerous time when a Sphinx Fighter came up behind us when we were already fighting, and I had to quickly use two or three Great Healing Potions on top of Itura's best efforts, but we survived that - occasionally people ran through heading deeper into the Tomb, but this didn't generally effect us. But then someone did run through with a mob in pursuit - I was having a mini-freeze at the time, but luckily the computer snapped out of it in time, and I managed to activate the Recall option that I try to keep active in a corner of the screen, and moved to where Zen had found a safe bit of wall. Itura wasn't quick enough, though, and got killed - she should still level up before Zen or I do, though.

We finished early, as it had been fairly hard work for quite a few hours; by then my total experience gain for the day had reached 55.34% - I'll need slightly more than that to level up to 67, so that may come on Thursday rather than Wednesday. Kee's drake is already 2475 points into his new level - he now gives a buff of the full 30 levels of increased armour, and an 11-level buff of magical power, so he's handy to have around. The loot from the Tomb was as usual underwhelming - Zen and Itu between them did get a Heaven Stone, an Item Drop Booster, a Skill Booster, and a yellow pair of high-level gloves, but all I got was a Bandage, a Rotting Bandage, and one ToolAid. Plus some gold, of course, but there are easier ways to make a little over half a million, I'm sure.

Meanwhile, Back In The Tomb... - September 3rd

I didn't have any time for actual adventuring in the late morning, but at least SirDarth was set up to do some mining in time for lunch, while Enchantrella ventured out to the Sesel Farm for some herb gathering. She did suffer a couple of disconnections, though, and ended up at Berbank Mill in Juno instead, to save on memory scrolls.

As soon as Keerella came on, however, the call came to join Zenderfly down in the Tomb of Theos. After a quick use of the ol' Horse Buffs in town, I took the Recall and joined her, to find that we were at the first, relatively open place we used to use, with Screaming Zombies only, which I thought would make a change from the cramped quarters further in - but Zen immediately ran off to that location, and Recalled Itura and me to join her.

Before long Sheele came on, and was persuaded to join us - she was kind enough to sell me some bloodseal gems, as I'd forgotten to buy the nine I'd need for the three new items of armour I was wearing. She didn't stay a huge amount of time, and after no more than 90 minutes Zen suggested we should take a break, in the hope that the witchy "Stat Poll" would improve. It decreases its target's base stat points, but apparently does vary in intensity, sometimes it's more powerful than other times.

I did pick up a Moonstone for myself along the way, which was better loot than yesterday - I joked that that would be my only useful item of the day, but one of the last zombies before we stopped actually dropped a Heaven Stone. As Itura was outside the party, it was a fifty/fifty chance, and it came to me, which seemed fair as Zen had got yesterday's, though she joked that as I'd said the Moonstone would be my only drop, I should hand it over to her.

So, that first session gave me 922 pet points (for 3397 out of 22390), and 19.40% experience. We then took a break, including a slightly early food time - as Zen wasn't back, I went across to Cariae-2 where GameSage AlexandriA was advertised as holding a "Q & A Session" - I should have been warned by her having a red name, but when someone said there was too much cross-talk in the middle of town, and how about moving to the west gate, I mounted up, like a number of others, and followed...and when I was just on the bridge Zen messaged me, and I started to type a reply, only to be interrupted by a window coming up - the window saying I was dead. Looking at the text box, it was AlexandriA herself who had killed me - and she'd killed my horse too, so that was 373,996 gold to unseal him. "Typical AlexandriA", Zenderfly commented, so I guess she normally is a nasty piece of work, I wonder why they made her a GameSage?

Anyway, being killed like that, with me not in PvP mode, didn't hit my skill points or experience, it just left a nasty taste, but it was time to get back to the Tomb, and join Zen and an archer called SimplyM, who was using a mana stealer. We were at the start of the Tomb to begin with, and DarkPulse101 needed some items transferred from a friend's account to his own, so joined us via Recall as that friend's character, and I took charge of the items - he then switched to DP and came back, but unfortunately it was Zen who activated the Recall this time, so DP arrrived way too close to the Screaming Zombie that we were fighting, and promptly died, Luckily he only lost 2 skill points, and was able to take his items off me and head for somewhere safer for a comparatively low level character. Shortly after that Zenderfly reached level 66 and went off to upgrade her Stone skill, and by the time she got back another group were busy there. Zen spotted a red-name (unfortunately not AlexandriA) in their group and went off to get Damor instead - though I think she said that she actually killed the wrong party member. Once Zen returned, she decided we should move back to our deeper spot, as the other group included a sorcerer, and their spirits have been known to cause lag.

SimplyM left after a while, but Zen and I, and Itu, continued, while chatting away with DarkPulse101 about various acronyms like "pssp", "ggd", and "brb"... and to my surprise I levelled up, after yesterday I'd not expected, with the shorter evening, to get to level 67, but I managed it, and put on my new circlet and boots. Since I'd not expected to get there, I hadn't any bloodseal gems with me again, sigh.

A level 67 rogue called Krazy joined us for a short while, and we tried the Sphinx Fighters and so on on our left too, three or four levels above the zombie types. That went well, though there were a couple of time when I had to double-click the Great Healing Potions. Itura lost her connection, but Zenderfly continued, using potions too... but he was getting tired, and Krazy had to go afk, so we decided to call it a day.

Keerella went up 67.78% today, then, and added 2492 pet points - and even with the pet "unsealing" and buying bloodseals and health and mana potions, did end up with perhaps a quarter of a million more gold than she started with. Now that I'm wearing the complete 70/72 mage armour set, Zen will be able to borrow the previous set, if she can get it away from MistressDomina, who had been wearing the first three pieces of it... I won't be on until the evening tomorrow, to play, but no doubt we'll manage to get together at some stage.

Evening Only... - September 4th

Zenderfly had a few ammendments for my post yesterday. Apparently when she was talking about the "Poll" in the Tomb of Theos, it wasn't the witchy skill "Stat Poll", it was the actual condition of the dungeon area itself, which fluctuates over time - sometimes it's more challenging than at other times, just to keep things interesting. And while Damor did accidentally kill the wrong player once during her brief visit, she killed her intended target no less than seven times. Why the red-named player kept on being resurrected I can't imagine. Oh, and it's not only the spirits that a sorcerer uses that can cause lag in the area, a sorcerer who transforms into that big red winged devil, or small-headed knight type tank, is bad news that way too.

I'd set up SirDarth to mine well into the night, out at Mudika Mine in Dratan; as he started a new pickaxe at around 11:00pm UK time, the axe's endurance should have run out soon after 3:00am, but when I checked in the morning, the pickaxe was still being used, though rather slowly. Some kind of lag had really slowed Darth's mining action down, and when I changed the camera angle, things speeded up again. It's something I had encountered when pet levelling, a change in the camera angle could greatly increase Leo's hit rate fighting the Treants.

Zen mentioned that she won't be online from Saturday to Monday, which may give Kee time for some farming in Egeha if she can get a lift - or maybe Kaerella will be down in Maargadum Jail, trying to get the skill points she needs to increase her mana regeneration a bit more.

The powers that be at Aeria had warned about a probable server hiccup at 11:30, so I broadcast that on the guild channel to remind people. That's certainly the time of day when that tends to happen, as I've mentioned in the past. However, by then I was safely offline, and busy in real life... not managing to get back until rather later, except of course for a little more mining, and even that didn't start until the early evening.

Zenderfly had decided to do some skill exp farming on the Dark Bogles - they're level 67, which is just right for me, and will soon be right for her too as she's level 66 at the moment. They are perhaps a bit more generous with the drops than their level 65 relatives, the ordinary Bogles, but they hit hard, and they are both aggressive and protective - it's surprising how many will run in on you if you attack one. Still, in a solo party they give 1100 skill exp, compared with now 880 from the level 65 type. Zen recalled me to C5 Egeha and we slogged away together - generally not sharing the same targets, but staying close together to share experience, loot, and horse buffs

So, quite a few healing potions got used - having Itura along wouldn't really have been practical, they'd have spawned by her and attacked her probably. We didn't stay up late, I think we'd both had a long day; Zen had been intending to borrow the rest of the level 65/67 +6 mage armour set from its current wearer, MistressDomina (I was able to lend her the boots and circlet that Kee still had in her inventory), and also transfer some spare manuals across to my carrier of such items, but in the end was too tired to want to bother this evening.

Looking at the skills available from the Master Mage, I could get level 7 of Fear for 350 skill points, but it is a skill I never use anyway, and it only increases the success rate from 95% to 99%; at level 68 level 7 of Freeze Arrow comes up, for 425 skill points, and that is a skill I use sometimes, so I'd better get that one. Level 70 offers the new skill Chaos Nova, which hits up to nine adjacent targets - but raises their attack, which seems a bit counter-productive, so I think I can avoid that one. Its five levels cost 1450 skill points anyway, with a further 1000 sp at level 98...unusually it also costs money to learn, 3,500,000 gold for those first five levels. Better, with my limited supply of skill points, to wait for level 72 and get the seventh and final level of Secret Study, increasing my magical attack by 6, for 324 skill points.

Level 74 offers the final level of Transformation, for converting health into mana, which is useful if you have an obliging healer in the party...300 skill points. At level 76, the second and final level of Mage Armor 2 is on offer for 300 sp, increasing one's mana regeneration rate, while level 78's offering is the eighth (of nine) level of Flame Field, for 400 sp. Level 80 has another level of Fear...but that's far enough to look into the future! Ah well, I do currently have enough skill points for Freeze Arrow level 7 and Secret Study level 7 anyway, some more concentrated farming will be needed if I'm to be ready for any of the others.

Anyway, this evening's adventure brought in 1375 pet points, 11.25% experience, and 46 skill points. Zen's theory is that if we grind right through to the next level we will have brought in enough cash, and sellable loot, to afford some Experience Boosters and a Platinum Blessed Iris each, and go after the level 106 Tomb of Theos boss monsters, the Anubis Spear Men...but, seeing that even Damor doesn't really have that easy a time against them, and other Anubis types in the area tend to attack as well, that may be a bit ambitious until we have a few more levels.

Dark Bogles, and a Visitor - September 5th

SirDarth got a disconnection overnight, about halfway though his pickaxe's life... and this morning there was another in-game official warning that things might go a bit pear-shaped, with lag spikes and a possible server crash - and for Cariae, so it came to pass, though luckily all I was doing at the time was moving some items across from one character to another.

After that, Darth went off to do some more mining, this time with a small supply of ToolAids, and kept busy out there at Mudika Mine - later he moved across to Serel Farm, if I can get the name right for once, to replenish our stocks of herbs. Keerella in particular seems to be getting through those rather quickly at the moment. Enchantrella tried some herb farming there at lunchtime, but almost immediately got a disconnection, so settled for Berbank Mill in Juno instead, which may be slower, but is easier to set up.

The main afternoon session involved Keerella of course, and a trip by Recall to Egeha to join Zenderfly and the Dark Bogles. We only stayed in action for about ninety minutes, which meant 26 skill points, 779 pet points, and 6.52% experience - we had to stop early because the TeaTime "happy hour" event was scheduled to start at 4:00pm rather than the usual 5:00pm.

We just about got back in time for that - Zen had logged out, but Kee had stayed in Egeha Village, so was able to Recall her. It actually started bang on time, rather than a few minutes before or after, and very soon we were back bashing Dark Bogles again, and getting double skill exp, and 50% extra experience, from them. We both had occasional trouble with lag, which Zen blames on the trees in that part of Egeha. Usually this just meant a delay of perhaps half a minute while nothing much happened, but I did have the very annoying sight of my pet drake's health bar being brought down with nothing I could do about it - brought down all the way to zero. I had to log out, and reappear in Randol; unsealing a level 42 pet drake costs 506,268 gold, I can report, but that's better than being without one's pet for 17 hours of actual fighting time. A shame Zen and I weren't fighting a bit closer together at that point, she might have noticed me apparently just standing there with my pet being attacked, and come to my rescue. Zen got a "send error report" crash a bit later, too. Luckily we both have Recall, so could get each other back quickly.

After half an hour or so of the event, the Grand Gold Dragon arrived - I don't know if she's aggressive these days, I didn't stick close enough to find out, but I think in the old days with Kamira I'd have been too close to live. Zenderfly quickly logged out, and came on as Damor instead; I used Recall to get her and Itura to us. Damor checked that I had got an Item Drop Booster and a Lucky Scroll I could use, and instructed me to wait until she told me to use them - the idea being that as I'm around 16 levels lower than she is, if I was the actual killer there ought to be better loot.

However, things didn't go to plan, and I didn't get called into action - those trees made things laggy, especially for Itura, and she and Damor both died several times. They don't have any unused skill points, though, so didn't lose anything except a few minutes worth of experience. Damor did finally kill the GGD herself, without me being involved - it didn't drop one of the "unique accessories", but five lucky scrolls, some crystals of experience (greater), and minor items did drop, so it wasn't a total loss - those lucky scrolls seem to be worth not far short of 200,000 gold each at present, and the crystals are roughly half that. Just for being in the party I got 10 Moonstones and 5 ToolAids, which can't be bad - I did have to run to avoid the GGD a couple of times, and also run for it when one of the level 88 Cursed Weavers the GGD spawned came after me, but I survived.

That disrupted the skill point farming a bit, but luckily it over-ran by a full hour - a good idea, as some people would have been assuming that it would start an hour later than it did. We continued for a little while after that, but then Zen spotted that there was a good movie on television, and decided to log out, having added 128 skill points in all.

I had passed the rest of the level 65/67 armour over to Zenderfly, but she's not wearing it - she prefers the previous set, which apparently has better bloodseals. I've assured her that I don't mind if she tries a new set of seals - it is fairly cheap to remove a set of seals, and then add fresh bloodseal gems in the same way as before, hoping, as a mage, that you don't get too many boosts to physical attack or something else pretty useless. And I asked her if the name of the German guild "Schattenwind" was at all rude, I'd wondered if it was, well, a bit lavatorial, but apparently it's "shadow wind"...

Zen had set up the party on the "Parties Recruitng Members" page as "Trips to Egeha 100k", and got a few customers who paid up without any complaint when they arrived. Some lower-level people managed to hop over too when we just had to use Recall for our own purposes; they were generally friendly and well behaved, though there was one knight who did try a bit of "kill stealing" and drop leaching, I think my mention that Zen had been known to PK such people did get home to him eventually though - to avoid going red, I think Zen had been preparing to bring a few Dark Bogles close to him and then beam out, which would have given him an interesting, if brief, time.

Zen seemed to get rather more drops than me, maybe because she is generally faster at fighting, but about 5 weapons to my 1, and quite a lot more armour? These things level out over time I guess, and I did at least get the Heaven Stone that was dropped. When the Grand Gold Dragon was around and Damor was preparing, I kept busy fighting the Dark Bogles, and the drops then seemed more frequent, including a couple of the weapons - I did wonder if the GGD's presence would boost the drop rate, but Zen wasn't sure if that would be the case.

After doing a bit of work on the blog, I went out again solo, and headed for the regular Bogles, as they are still white for me, and a more restful way to end the day. Stupidgirl, who had been partied with us for a while, left around then - well in Taiwan, where she is, it would have been early Saturday morning by then - and I just joined a random solo party, based in good old Prokion Temple. I left slightly earlier than I'd planned, due to a disconnection, but by then I'd got the day's tally up to 24.56% experience, 2493 pet points, and 125 skill points, so not a bad day's work.

Kae Day - September 6th

After some moving around of items to clear room in Keerella's inventory, SirDarth reached Serel Farm in good time for lunch - I assume he takes sandwiches, though I've never actually seen him eating there. Enchantrella settled for Berbank Mill in Juno again, which is just as well as there were a number of disconnections over lunch for her. As she had some spare skill points, I've given her a few levels of the herb gathering skill, to speed things up there. When I was ready for action, well, the possibility of a disconnection put me off the idea of going to Egeha, so it was Kaerella, my level 42 cleric, who ventured forth, heading for Maargadum Jail in Merac.

And it was lucky she did, really, as an old contact from Kae's Friends List, Baldur18 came on - he had been without a suitable internet connection for some weeks, so had been away from Last Chaos so long that his list of friends had grown drastically shorter, and the old guild he had been had just about died. He came out to the Jail to team with me against the canines on the second level, and we did okay, though it's not the fastest way to gain skill points ever. We both had our laggy moments, and when he disconnected a few minutes before my usual food time, it seemed time to call it a day, or at least an afternoon.

Kae added 5.87%, and 23 skill points, plus a little bit of loot. I was able to tell Baldur18 about Collector Ryl and the way he can exchange one class's items for another's, so he dashed off to convert a +4 knight set he had been trying to sell, and came back proudly wearing the sorcerer equivalent. He did attempt to join Norcaine, but of course since he had only just left his old guild, the notice came up that he has to wait a week.

I'd mentioned my Keerella character, so he was able to contact me when I logged back in as Kee after food. I checked with Escadalia, and she wasn't in Egeha - I could afford to pay 800,000 gold to go there, a few Bogle drops would cover that, but with disconnections around, it didn't seem a wise investment, so I opted to put the Pierce of Wind accessories back in the warehouse, and transfer them back to Kae - after a brief appearance as FoxHunter, as she only has one pet, to help Baldur18 to move a stormy-grey level 31 drake and a level 37 "knight mare" mount across from another character of his. It's a bit of a gamble, entrusting such valuable items to someone from your Friends List...you can lose your mount, and your friend!

So, this time we stayed out of the Jail, and went off to fight Blood Frenzies, which at level 37 are still green-named for Kae. The idea was for Kae to do the mob-gathering, as she has a ranged attack, and Baldur18 to fly in on his dragon and bake them all with his fiery breath, having regained his mana while I was doing the running about. As he is the right level for such critters (36 to their 37) the skill exp given to each of us was around 450, almost as much as the 550 I'd get for more slowly soloing them, so it worked pretty well, though we both had laggy bits and disconnections - and unfortunately he did die once, along with his dragon, which is always costly and annoying, it was lucky he was the one who got a Heaven Stone earlier. The Grand Red Dragon did "arrive" on us three times, I think, but that just meant Kae had to avoid one part of our mob-gathering circuit for a few minutes. Non-aggressive raid boss monsters are a great improvement, heheheh...

Running about hitting Blood Frenzies is rather fun, though I was keeping a conversation with DarkPulse101 going for much of the time too - I was telling her that, as she had, she said, bought aeria points once, she needed to log in to her aeria account, go to the store part, and check her "reward points history", since there ought to be a bonus amount there awaiting redemption. She had been asking me if I'd buy a Platinum Super Skill Pill for her, but exchanging aeria points for in-game gold is a bit tricky these days, only scammers offer 100ap for a million - if I spent 500ap on one of this week's package deals, I could get items that would easily sell in-game for 75 or 80 million in gold. I'm happy enough to sell really useful things, like the "Egeha Package", to guildies at a bargain price, but things that just speed up your skill point gain for an hour are a bit of a luxury, better to spend a couple more hours fighting and get some extra loot as well.

Despite lags and disconnections it generally was fun - Baldur18 did lag out at the end, though, just as I was returning with a few dozen Blood Frenzies, which I then had to deal with myself. I was able to finish getting the skill points for the one-and-only level of Rise Mana 2, anyway, so Kae's rate of mana regeneration has now been increased, and she is now up to date on her skills - but it looks as if freezing her experience at level 42 and doing some more sp farming on Blood Frenzies would be a good idea, there are a lot more skills to get at higher levels now. In all, she got 70 skill points today, plus 9.99% experience - I didn't use Kae's drake, SirFrancis, much, as the Blood Frenzies do attack pets, but even 147 pet points helps, yes?

Kae & Darth & Enchie - September 7th

After the traditional lunchtime farming and mining, and a check to see if Escadalia was around for a possible lift to Egeha, it looked like another good chance for Kaerella to go out and mob the Blood Frenzies. And, since teaming with Baldur18 (level 36) had definitely enhanced the skill point gain, why not see what happened when SirDarth (level 33) was in the party?

My suspicions were correct - when Kae killed a Blood Frenzy while SirDarth was in the solo party but out of her compass, she got 550 skill exp, but when he was close enough to be inside the circle, the figure tended to be more like 600, though of course it varied from one kill to the next.

I killed a few mobs like that, and then Baldur18 came along to join - this cut the skill exp per kill each to around two-thirds of what it had been, so we moved a little way away so that Darth was outside the circle - though he'd have been useful if one of us had had a disconnection. After a while though Bal decided to strike out on his own, as then he'd get 1100 skill exp each, and hopefully kill at least half as fast and therefore move into "profit", and knew I'd be okay with Darth. So we continued like that.

The "Sunday Teatime" event, European version, was scheduled to begin at five, with again double skill exp and 50% extra experience, so we stopped at around four for the food break, and I was back in time to take it from the beginning - and Kae and Darth, again with Bal in the solo party, continued their good work for about ninety minutes. By the end of that, Kae had gone up another 5.99% on the experience front, and added 72 skill points, which is pretty good at her level, while Darth, for doing practically nothing but stand there, was ahead by 54 - he must have been outside the compass circle, while Kae was fighting alongside Bal, for the other 18, but it's a useful boost.

DarkPulse 101, meanwhile, had got tired of farming skill points at level 17, and asked for a bit of "power levelling". My feeling was that, as there were still disconnections around, Egeha and KS-ing Kee was a non-starter, while teaming with Darth would have been awkward as most monsters will ignore a knight if there's a mage attacking them too...while Kae was more than 15 levels ahead but not high enough to go after really hard types. So it was my level 27 mage Enchantrella who moved to Cariae-4, and headed for good old Prokion Temple to team up with DP.

And it worked well - I remembered to get SirDarth to unfreeze DP's experience before we started, and, with a little help from the Teatime event over-running by not much under an hour, we got her up from level 17 to 21, which can't be bad. Reaching level 20 meant she completed her apprenticeship successfully, apparently LightDash had insisted on being her Guardian. We started on the ground floor, and I was against moving further as the place was pretty crowded, we could "hear" people arguing over the spaces, and we had our room to ourselves, but eventually DarkPulse101 persuaded me to move on upstairs, and we managed the Orc Axemen and Orc Sergeants with only small amounts of healing potion being needed. We both had occasional lag spikes and disconnections, but managed to get back pretty quickly, and continued on together. Enchie went on for a little while longer after DP went off for a shower, and ended up with 240 shiny new skill points to her name. And a few more guild points for Norcaine I guess - I see we have 28,605 of them now.

It was almost time for the 9:30 Quiz by then, but first MistressDomina passed over on loan the level 33 +6 wand I'd promised DP - but shortly after that DP spotted a +9 weapon for 12.9 million, and decided to treat herself. It seems a relatively reasonable price to me, the way prices are going these days. So I got the wand back, after one of the shortest loans on record.

Unfortunately DarkPulse101 got booted out of the quiz after the first couple of questions, despite trying to be on the same side as the majority - and MistressDomina, who'd been clicked on to Darth, somehow got unclicked at that stage too, and so respawned in the middle of Randol. I had got Darth on the upstairs computer, for its more reliable connection, but the frame rate was really chugging with the masses of people in there, making it difficult to move in time from one side of the room - but I made it through successfully, so that was, at least, one set of ToolAids, Moonstones, and Heaven Stones acquired.

After MistressDomina had put her level 65/67 armour back on, she got a private message from sneaky old Sheryblair, trying to recruit her for a "level 11 guild, 76 members, average level 52" - boy would she have been surprised to find MD was only level 10 if she'd accepted!

I hung around a little, as I was actually in the raffle since the "25CB Loot Finder" is rather a good deal anyway and I'd been meaning to put one into store for future sale - but the winner, getting some Chaos Balls and an hour or so of Monster Spawn at a place of their choosing, was on the Sarissa server, so there was no further interest for us. Sheele logged in, and was asking what I thought about us moving to the Hatzring server, since Cariae is now so full of people at level 90 or above - she was at the arena, and felt like a noob to see five players of that level there. After all the hours spent to get this far, I can't say that the idea appeals, though I suppose if other people from the guild really wanted it...well, I don't want to farm all that sp for guild upgrades again myself for sure!

Back to Egeha - September 8th

I really ought to check the kaerella "at" gmx-dot-com email inbox more often - when I logged in this morning, there was an email from Elvastar, and it had been sitting there for four days. I'm glad to be able to pass on the news that he is well again, and working at a new job - the only problem is that, with all that time when he couldn't work, the family budget doesn't stretch to paying for a broadband connection for his computer at present. And the dial-up connection wouldn't really be reliable enough for Last Chaos, sigh... But it is great to hear from him, and know he has recovered his health.

When Zenderfly said she was away for the family gathering "Saturday to Monday", I wasn't sure if that meant she would be around today - but she was on when I got back mid-afternoon from a shopping trip, and swiftly invited me to Egeha, on the Cariae-5 server. Luckily she was not in favour of Sheele's idea of moving to Hatzring; the high-level overcrowding is more of a problem for PvP people at the arena than it is for those of us who stick with PvE, and by the time we got new characters up to the heights in Hatzring, that server would be full of level 90 people too...

So, it was Dark Bogle time once more - and, as sometimes happens, our chums at Aeria had forgotten to turn off the US "late teatime" from yesterday, so it was still 50% extra experience, and double skill exp! This happy state of affairs continued until about a quarter to six, a shame I'd not been online for the first half of the afternoon - by the time I went off, rather later than usual, to get some food Kee had gone up 13.21% on the experience side, added 1101 pet points, and got 71 more skill points. Three Heaven Stones dropped, and although two of them actually came from Dark Bogles I'd been fighting, Zen got them all. This helped make up for her missing the quiz, she said. It seemed to me that she got most of the weapon and armour drops as well, but I got a few.

For the last part of the session we were hassled by a level 67 rogue of the "LCGenericName" variety, always fighting close to us, and even attacking Dark Bogles that were attacking us. Her attitude was not "oh, sorry, the spot is occupied I see, I'll move on", but rather "you don't own this spot" - and after a while Zen beamed Damor in to join us, with her red name and the sign for "PvP Enabled" over her head. The rogue didn't take the hint - and shortly afterwards had a nice restful lie-down on the ground.

The event bonus ended soon after that. Kee stayed in Egeha village, and after the food break we went back to the Dark Bogles for a while, until Zenderfly was called away to help Escadalia, who was on an Iris for extra experience gain, and needed Damor's help. I went on solo, moving across to the less demanding regular Bogles mainly - I met a level 47 mage called MagicianLORD, and supplied him with horse buffs - he kept busy in the lane from the village to my favourite hill, and I'd ride down to him whenever we needed to renew the buffs. Luckily I didn't get any disconnections there - he did once, but I was able to recall him. He didn't stay too long, not that I mind giving a little help, but by level 47 he ought to have his own mount, I'd have thought.

Baldur18 was in touch - he seemed to be happily sp-farming, he declined the offer of a lift to Egeha. I explained that with Zen back, Kae wouldn't be online much, as Kee is the one who needs the levelling, alongside Zen. He'll make an excellent recruit for the guild I think, I hope him being a sorcerer doesn't put some people off.

At logging out time Sheele wanted a special title, while DarkPulse101 wanted to be frozen again, now at level 23, for more Prokion Temple farming. The freezing was easy, once SirDarth was out of Merchant Mode (he'd come to Egeha via my Recall to pass over some herbs I needed, and stayed to sell some recovery pots at 950 gold each, rather more than they cost in Strayana) - getting Sheele a title took a few tries, as gaps and punctuation didn't seem to be allowed. I'm not sure how long he'll get to keep his current title, maybe not very long after Zenderfly sees it...

Anyway, Kee's final total for the day was 19.71% experience, plus 1961 pet points, and 102 skill points, getting her to a nice round 1000 unused skill points. Not that those points will last very long when she gets to a level with a good new skill, or new skill level, available...at high levels, skills tend to be expensive.

Minding the Bogles - September 9th

SirDarth went out for some stone-gathering at Mudika Mine, and Enchantrella went out to Berbank Mill to gather some herbs. One item I bought while out shopping (in the real world) yesterday was a kitchen-type timer - so I can now set that for exactly ten minutes, and thus be alerted when Enchantrella will have finished one stint on the herb bush - that should save a useful bit of time. I don't know how long the battery will last, as there doesn't seem to be a way of switching off the 00:00 time display, but hey, the timer was only a pound.

My email reply to Elvastar got bounced, I hope sending it to his other, webmail address worked better. Well at least he will have read here that his message was received...

After a little shopping and moving around of items, Kee got the call from Zenderfly that a team-up was about to start. For a change it was me who got into a party and was given a Recall lift to Egeha, and then Recalled Zen to join me. We hit the Dark Bogles again - when we got there somebody else was already hard at work, and seemed to be drawing and killing a big mob of them, so we politely moved on - but when we passed that way a few minutes later he had gone, so we were able to settle in - and Zen reached level 67.

She did leave a little earlier than usual, for a family meal I think - and didn't manage to return. I assume that some of the extended family from the weekend reunion are still around. I continued a bit longer, up to my normal food time, and by then had gone up 8.33%, 1070 pet points, and 36 skill points.

After the break, it was back to Bogle-bashing. MagicianLORD came along again - he did make a nuisance of himself with another member of the solo party that I'd set up, I did as party leader have to ask if I should kick him, and then he came back to me to take some of my experience. He asked if a friend of his could also come - and when Chrisrouge1pow1 did join, I saw that he was level 22, which is a bit low for Egeha I think! He "helped" kill a few Bogles, and went up to level 23, which is a step in the right direction, though really he ought to be in Prokion Temple. Luckily the pair of them went off to hunt their own Bogles after a while.

With Zen away, the guild was extremely quiet, though DarkPulse101 was on for some of the time. I've lent her a mainly +3 set of the level 25/27 armour, and a +4 level 25 wand, though she reckons that, as I'm not playing Enchantrella much, I could lend her Enchie's +15 event weapon, to help her gain skill points quickly. This may indeed happen. I should charge a rental fee for that...

I've bought SirDarth an "Egeha Package" too, so he now also can do Recall... useful if Kee loses the connection and he doesn't, if I've previously Recalled him to Egeha. He can try staying overnight sometimes, though of course there is quite often a disconnection of some sort even for him over such a long period, and tonight is the night the servers go down for their weekly maintenance anyway. I must set him up in merchant mode, he could perhaps sell most of the Large Attack & Defence Potions that are part of that package.

Well, Keerella ended the day up a total of 17.11% for experience, so the evening session was slightly longer than the afternoon one - another day as long as this would bring me close to level 68, though tomorrow's adventuring will probably end rather earlier. 2258 pet points means that Kee's pet is more than halfway through his level now, and 80 skill points is a useful addition, though it shows that any skill level to add is the equivalent of four or five days' work. There are other compensations, of course, after selling some of the Bogle drops to the local NPC merchant, Grocer Wein, Kee's cash balance rose by over five million in gold today.

More Dark Bogles - September 10th

Darth managed some herb-gathering before a disconnection - I then seemed to spend rather a long time switching stuff between characters, before Keerella was ready, with an empty enough inventory, to head for Egeha - after buying an "Insect Cabinet" from Lorraine, for 100 gold, to collect assorted bugs in. Yes, that's the new "special drop event" for the next two or three weeks - the trick is to get insects with a high point value, so that the 16 in the box give you enough points for a useful reward. You can discard insects with a low point value, and then just hope that the next one you get is better. Today I got a bee, a glowworm, a dragonfly, a red dragonfly, a swallowtail, a cicada, and a white butterfly - 7 of the 16 slots filled, and a mere 29 points.

I joined a party in Cariae-6, the role-playing server, but the leader Phaeton, a level 79 knight, didn't have Recall. He was happy to let me use a Teleport Book, though, which allowed me to "beam" myself across to him - he kindly moved back onto the rocks, at Damor's favourite old Boucu Demon fighting place. And I immediately hopped back into town, and then got Darth added and brought up too, in case Kee got a disconnection. A rogue in the mid-twenties took the chance to come and visit Egeha for the first time, and was suitably impressed. She got as far as the Devil Graves, and was disappointed when I mentioned that they don't give pet experience. I think a Bogle did manage to kill her before she headed back for Prokion Temple, which was hardly surprising.

Zenderfly wasn't around until fairly late in the afternoon, when she used all her supply of Moonstones at the statue in Randol, getting mainly junk apparently. We have a change to the Moonstone situation too, this week, we get a "Moonstone Box" as a drop, and have to open it to see what kind of Moonstone we get. Some entitle you to try for better rewards than others, apparently.

Anyway, I was out bashing plenty of Bogles and Dark Bogles - there are three of those quite nicely spaced at the bottom of Bogle Hill, which can be taken one at a time rather than having a whole mob descend on one. 5.76% experience was the afternoon's score, plus 794 pet points and 31 skill points.

There was no sign of Zen in the evening, but I kept bashing away at Dark Bogles and their kindlier compadres; DarkPulse101 brought a friend of his, Flounder, a level 22 knight, into the guild, while DarkStorm44 decided to have his level 25 sorcerer, ClonedDeep, join us - since he'd been kicked out of his previous guild! So towards the end of the evening the guild channel was pleasantly lively.

Kee's end-of-day statistics were a total of 12.43% up on the experience front, plus 1716 pet points and 65 skill points. And, with some selling to Grocer Wein of assorted Bogle-dropped armour, and the gold they dropped, Kee's cash balance advanced by around five million, which can't be bad. Kee's connection was pretty good, very few laggy moments, and no disconnections in Egeha at all. SirDarth did lose his place standing in Egeha once, when the game crashed on that computer, but I soon brought him back. I may leave him connected overnight, though he may well lose the connection before Kee has the chance to rejoin him there tomorrow.

Happy Returns - September 11th

My cunning plan to keep SirDarth in Egeha overnight came to nothing, as my venerable upstairs computer had a Windows Update that it decided to install - and this also decided to finish the job by restarting the computer all by itself, which seems a little arrogant. So, no sign of Last Chaos when I checked the computer this morning! It was a bit of a long shot, anyway.

SirDarth did some herb farming at lunchtime, but my more modern computer lost contact with the internet this morning - I assume that it's actually the fault of the older computer, as restarting that one solved the problem. So, the afternoon started with a little bit more switching of stuff around, and then, my plan was for my level 42 cleric Kaerella to team up with SirDarth again against the Blood Frenzies, getting them both some skill exp and getting Kae some experience too.

But I was very glad to see Zenderfly log in, and we decided that Kee and Zen would head for Egeha, and the Dark Bogles. Zen checked her Friends List etc, but decided we'd have to actually use the teleporter to get there, which costs 800,000 gold, paying half each. What happened next I'm not entirely sure, but I thought Zen went there, because I received a Recall - only to get a "send error message?" crash immediately. I reported this via Darth, who was also logged in - and then Zen was next to him in Randol, giving him half the "ticket" money. So, while I had slight reservations about using Darth on the older computer to travel there, off he went, arriving safely, and Recalling Zen, followed by Kee when I'd logged her in again.

Zenderfly then handed over another 400,000 gold, so that she had paid me the whole ticket price, apologised, and left. Apparently her higher-level wizard Damor had received a call to "power level" someone, which, given that ten million in gold per level was involved, quite rightly took priority.

So, it was a solo Bogle-bashing afternoon for me - or at least that was the idea. Unfortunately, after I made a solo party, with "solo only" as the title, some lower-level characters took advantage of a Recall issued for people of the proper level. The knight Sam9 in particular stayed close to me for rather a long time, though at least he did apply Divine Shield occasionally, and there were a couple of rogues too. Maybe if I'd been left to solo properly I'd have managed more than 4.33% experience, 19 skill points, and 737 pet points by the time of my food break...

Luckily Zenderfly was able to join in for the evening session, and it was great to be teamed up with her again, though she went off to the area with the groups of Dark Bogles, where one tends to get attacked by three or four at once, while I stayed at the bottom of Bogle Hill, where there are only three well-spaced Dark Bogles among the more docile regular kind. The guild channel was nicely busy for much of the time, and an added bonus was that Zeratus came on for a while - he has been very busy with the new school year, so didn't know about insect collecting, moonstone boxes, or some of the latest price fluctuations.

The new price of the Stone of Shadows accessory has fallen to around 50 million, Zer reported, which, as he'd bought a couple at the "bargain price" of 90 million a while back, made him take an instant dislike to Strayana's boss dragon, with its habit of dropping that. Hmm, 50 million, should I buy three now, or wait a little longer...?

People started to log out soon after eight. Zenderfly mentioned that she'd got a level 85 g5 staff from Escadalia today, and would, when a suitable upgrade probability enhancing event comes along, attempt to get it up to +15, and then sell it to me for 100 million "or so". Sounds good to me! Zen is the expert on pricing, so I can be confident that it will be a pretty good price. "I want you to hit hard", she commented.

The level 78 knight Masre is a recent addition to my Friends List, and has offered to help with a bit of power levelling - I think it might be linked with his desire to get 799 aeria points for some experience boosters, though, and not just a convenient contact for a lift to Egeha sometimes. Baldur18 came on the messenger briefly, deciding to wait for the Friday event for his next mobbing expedition to the Blood Frenzies...let us hope we do get double skill exp then.

By early evening I'd reached 99.98% of my level, and froze my experience there, so that I could continue to get the maximum skill experience from Dark Bogles. When I do move to level 68 though I'll be spending 425 skill points on level 7 of Freeze Arrow, which increases its power from 300% of the normal attack to 330%, so that may well come in useful. That's an awful lot of days of skill point farming used up, but hey, that's what they are for. Over the day I went up 5.67% before I froze, added 2128 pet points, and the skill points total went up 64, which shows that I was farming pretty diligently.

A Long Slog - September 12th

SirDarth survived through the night in Egeha, only to get disconnected - at about 11:30 in the morning, uk time, I think, to no great surprise! Ah well, at least he sold a few herbs and recovery potions while he was sitting in Egeha. though as Zenderfly has commented, a little in-game gold for a few hour's electricity keeping the computer switched on isn't too good a bargain.

I had been expecting Zenderfly to come online at about 2:00pm my time, but it was half an hour or so after that when she finally arrived - her bicycle tire had developed a puncture about 25km from home. So, even then, she had to go off for a rather late lunch, and generally recover. I hope the weather over there was okay...

So, Kaerella and SirDarth, who had just gone out to the Blood Frenzies, were able to play out there for about an hour, and got 21 skill points each, plus a few Moonstone Boxes and a little bit of gold. As Darth has the spot on his memory scroll, and can Recall party members, it is pretty easy to set up, and then Kae, with horse buffs, just runs around close to every Blood Frenzy in the area, and brings them all back to within range of Darth, adds a Fast Bow Fixing buff, and kills them all.

But, as the Friday "Happy Hour" was scheduled to start at 4:00pm, I had to leave them, and go off for a rather early food break. I was back soon after four - the "HH" started bang on time, it was double skill exp, but without anything else, no 50% extra skill experience this time. Zen had already partied up with Escadalia in Cariae-5, so I changed to Keerella and hopped over there, pausing only to move the three "Pierce of Wind" accessories back over from Kae.

Zen of course was at her favourite Dark Bogle spot, so that is where I arrived, but rather than cramp her style after a few minutes I headed back along the road to the foot of Bogle Hill...however, deciding that that was perhaps a bit unfriendly, I soon headed back, to find a sorcerer called Marco93 also there, and complaining that it was his spot... a feeling Zenderfly didn't share, since being afk at the back somewhere doesn't really reserve a whole area for whenever one returns to one's keyboard. They exchanged a few words on the subject, but it didn't seem serious, or so I thought.

Escadalia told us that the Grand Gold Dragon had shown up, and asked for Damor to join her, so Zen left for a while. Damor did I think get killed once, when the Cursed Weavers spawned (which they do when the GGD gets down to a certain amount of health), but returned and finished the job - Esca hadn't used an Item Drop Booster, she'd been distracted by a pk-type rogue watching them, and there wasn't any unique accessory dropped, though Damor did at least get five Lucky Scrolls and some other oddments. The rogue left when she saw that there wasn't a good accessory, she may well have been thinking of trying the "PK" them both and grab it if something valuable had been on the ground.

Zenderfly returned, and the Dark Bogle fighting continued - and then suddenly she was on about 5% health, and used the open Recall I'd had up to teleport over to me. It turned out that Marco93, having decided to leave, had wanted to finish by killing her - she rushed over and tried to use Stone on him, but couldn't get close enough before he vanished back to town. Exciting places, PvP-enabled sub-servers!

A little later, though, Zen did get killed by the Dark Bogles, giving too much attention to the chat window apparently - as she was carrying almost 2600 unused skill points (plus plenty temporarily assigned to the "special" skills like material processing), she lost 60 skill points, which is annoying, though I think she still came out ahead, sp-wise, over the session. She mentioned that the current exchange rate of aeria points for in-game gold is about 100ap to 3,000,000 gold, but as a friend and guildie I let her have a 99ap Resurrection Scroll for half that, so next time she dies, unless it's to do with a disconnection, she won't lose anything.

The two-hour double skill exp event ended after exactly two hours - which is unusual, usually they are more generous than that and leave it running for maybe an extra half hour. It must have been a different GM, or other Aeria employee, at the switch! We continued with the Dark Bogles, though, for another hour before Zenderfly had to leave... and I continued until my usual logging-off time. I'd kept my experience frozen to remain at level 67 and get as much skill exp as i could from both varieties of Bogle, so that Norcaine's guild points total has moved along rather usefully, to over 57,000 now, but Kee's marathon session brought in 2057 pet points, and, helped along by the two hours of double skill exp, 108 skill points.

Zenderfly was saying that I ought to get level 7 of Transformation when I reach level 74 (300 points), and probably, as soon as I reach level 68, Freeze Arrow level 7 (425 points); Mage Armor 2 level 2 at level 76 (300 points) would increase the speed at which my supply of mana regenerates, while adding Secret Study level 7 at level 72 (250 points) as well just about wipes out my current supply, so if I want anything else, well, some more skill points will have to be obtained at some stage. Unlike Zen, I was too high a level to make use of the upgraded Prokion Temple, which does put Kee at a disadvantage. I think, however, that our plan is to return to the Tomb of Theos this weekend, and do some levelling, I must remember to unfreeze my experience gain!

The Long Afternoon - September 13th

I managed to take SirDarth and Kaerella out to the Blood Frenzies for about an hour in the morning - Kae did actually lose her connection just about when I needed to end the adventure, but SirDarth was able to despatch the one remaining foe while Kae just stood there, before heading over to Serel Farm for some herb harvesting. They only got 16 skill points each for their efforts, but it's a fun way to spend some time.

Enchantrella did some lunchtime herb harvesting too, at Berbank Mill in Juno - but before long it was time for Kee to reclaim her Pierce of Wind accessories, check she had enough potions of a healing nature, unfreeze her experience gain, and get ready to join Zenderfly out at the Tomb of Theos...though first she needed to get that last .02% and level up to level 68. Luckily the Arcane Golems, at level 60, still gave a little experience, so quickly killing a few of those did the trick - and also added a couple of skill points. Then 425 skill points were duly spent on level 7 of Freeze Arrow - not a skill I use a lot, but rather handy when Zen and I are being power levelled.

Zenderfly had already started a party down in the Tomb of Theos, so I quickly got a Recall to join in, to find her at the starting area, fighting the Screaming Zombies, and not alone. In fact the party, as the hours went by, varied between four and eight people...I don't think the level 25 healer Avarielle counted, though she did absent-mindedly take Recall and then run off deeper into the Tomb, for all the world as if she was level 75 rather than 25, before attacking something and rather quickly dying. She lost about 100 skill points, apparently, but at that level it won't take her long to regain them back at Prokion Temple.

Participating members of the party, or "swarm", included ButterflyEffect (level 66 rogue), Metelica (level 54 royal knight), LassLoin (level 61 archer), Versinia (level 65 rogue), Defective (level 69 rogue), Krokignon (level 62 royal knight), SimplyM (level 64 archer), Sweetlove (level 60 archer), and Bravehaertsbro (level 65 royal knight). Generally it meant that each Screaming Zombie only gave me about 0.10% experience gain, but it was so speedy that good progress was made.

Not wanting to leave such a good party, I continued past my usual food break time...three hours past, in fact, so I was a bit hungry by the time the party finished... Zen had had a call to power-level one of her clients, and switched to Damor for that, while a knight called SirHenry1 was volunteering to help Defective gain a few levels, if she provided the necessary pots etc. I may not have added any skill points, other than the 2 from the Arcane Giants, but I'd gone up 81.23% on the experience front, and 3015 pet points.

I'd rather assumed that Zenderfly would be busy as Damor for the rest of the evening, but I was just finishing my food, while Enchantrella did a little more farming, when Damor asked me to help her transfer her three Stone of Shadows accessories back to Zen... and before long she was Recalling me to the Tomb again! This time to begin with we just had the archer Sweetlove with us, though Krokignon joined us again before long. Sweetlove stayed until about 10:15, UK time, when she reached her target, level 62, and had to leave - and it seemed a good opportunity for me to depart as well. My connection had behaved itself very well - I did get occasional little "lag freezes", when everyone would just stand around, apparently doing nothing, but they always righted themselves. Zen did have a couple of "send error report" crashes, but with the help of my Recall, each time came back very quickly, her computer must do a faster job of loading the game than mine does.

By then I'd gone up to level 69, meaning that I'd gone through the whole of level 68, and then some, without any boosters or power-levellers, in a single day's play. I doubt if that will happen again with future levels! The total experience gain was 107.20%. As for pet points, well, I went up 4298, which got Kee's drake to level 43, with 863 of the 24,405 needed for level 44 too. I don't gain pet points as fast as Zen, though, who mentioned well before the end that she'd gained over 6,000 - my use of Terra Spear does cut down the number of actual hits I make on the target, which is what counts.

One Long Session - September 14th

I didn't actually get SirDarth or Enchantrella set up to do any farming today, which makes a change. Instead, it was just Keerella in action - along with Zenderfly, of course, and some of our new Tomb raiding friends!

The action started at 2:20 - and continued as a single session for over six hours, though with various very short breaks. Sweetlove (level 61 archer) was our first companion, down deep in the Tomb of Theos, for our battles against the level 100 Screaming Zombies and the level 101 Infected Grey Mummies, and before long LassLoin (level 64 archer) joined us too, and then Versina (level 66 rogue) and Defective (level 73 rogue now), all people we'd teamed with yesterday; the only new addition was BIueCross (level 63 archer), who Zen had a slight difficulty adding to her Friends List as the "l" of "Blue" is actually a capital "i".

Defective reported that her power-levelling with SirHenry1 had gone very well, going up three-and-a-half levels in about an hour, using about 25 experience boosters, etc. Talking of power levelling, the knight Masre messaged me again offering his services, but with Zenderfly as my companion on this adventure I don't really have a need for him.

I told Zen about him, commenting how eager he was to get aeria points, and she advised me not to have anything to do with him, she'd come across him when she'd been playing as Damor, and he was the kind of player who'd lure in Skinwalkers (level 82 aggressive boss monsters) onto people fighting Boucu Demons, in order to get them killed and take over the spot.

Well, party members came and went - at 5:00 pm prompt the "Sunday TeaTime" event, which was just double experience, began, and at 7:00 pm prompt in ended. I did miss perhaps ten minutes of the double experience - I disconnected, I think for the third time, and the game crashed when I tried to log back in - a "hard crash", I couldn't even close LC down, I had to restart the computer. Zen did tell me that I'd missed out on something like 15% experience rise, though comparing our total gain later I think it was probably not much more than 6%.

The party started to get smaller when the event was over, until it was just Zen, me, and Itura, called back into action when we started to get short of archers, who can heal pretty well, though not quite as well as a cleric like Itu. I'd managed to grab a bread sandwich and a chocolate bar, rather than take my usual proper food break, and we were tentatively going to go on until about nine, to give half an hour free before the Quiz, but around half an hour before that, a specialist sorcerer joined the party.

Zen had been describing the party as for level 65-75, or something like that, and this sorcerer was being a bit over-optimistic - he was level thirty-something. Zen does get annoyed at the number of people who ignore the level requested, and did Recall him in, with the idea of teaching him a lesson... but she didn't actually boot him out of the party, so when Zen or I did a Recall to get ourselves away from any zombies, he was able to use that too. And I am a bit too nice in such situations, I fear, adding a Recall when he asked. He was actually doing pretty well, if about out of mana, though of course as he was more than 15 levels below us the idea of partying with him wasn't viable.

But he was getting the zombies stirred up, and I think he did pull one onto Itura, who died, so Zen advised me to log out, along with her, which was what I did. What his (Ahmad something?) fate was, history does not record.

That gave a little extra time to get ready for the Quiz, but the usual tactic of following the majority didn't work too well this time. I'd gone into our usual sub-server for it, Cariae-4, but apparently it got congested, so some of the guild were in c3, and Zenderfly and Damor, arriving rather late, were in c5.

Unfortunately, there were some new questions this week, based mainly on the new map Strayana. Question eight was my undoing, and got more than half the people out of the Quiz Room - we didn't know the name of the dragon there. Looking at the "Wet Paint" wiki for Last Chaos, it looks to me as if the right answer about a dragon name in Strayana would have been either Mist Shadow or Blood Shadow, they are both level 120 boss monsters, though the raid monster is the level 130 Blue Dragon... Zerenity was saying later in Randol that only six people got as far as question 11 in c4, and five of them got kicked out on question 18. Zenderfly reported from c5 that she managed to get through to the end, so she's set up to have plenty of Heaven Stones for the next upgrade event, anyway.

But that doesn't detract from our sterling work in the Tomb of course. 3387 pet points means Kee's drake is about a sixth of the way through level 43 - and 114.84% up in experience, so that Keerella is now level 70, with 100 stat points in Intelligence, which is perhaps as far as one goes with that aspect, with all future points probably going into Dexterity, for its Physical Evasion... though, looking at the tables on the wiki, more mana, magical hit rate, magical resistance, and magical attack from continuing with Intelligence do seem tempting! I must ask Zen.

Zen left a message that she would be checking in the morning to see if the US-aimed "late TeaTime" had been left switched on, as has been known, and if it wasn't still running, she would go out into the fresh air all day for some bicycling... so while there is a chance that tomorrow will see some more Tomb joint action, it's more likely that I will be bashing Blood Frenzies as Kae, or Orc Sergeants as Darth, or just messing around with minor characters for a change. The second half of next week will get a bit busy in real life. with only evenings available for playing, but we've still got a few days before that starts.

Several Short Sessions - September 15th

I did a fair amount of moving stuff around between characters, so that most quest items are now in the appropriate inventory, and MistressDomina is pretty well stocked to go into Merchant Mode again some time, with a few odd Item Drop Boosters, Large Attack Potions etc moved over to her. Oh, and Enchantrella did some herb gathering over lunch.

In Zen's absence the afternoon was my own, so SirDarth went off to the Blood Frenzies, and Recalled Kaerella to join him, after which Kae applied horse buffs, and ran around collecting every Blood Frenzy in the area, before returning to her starting point, adding Fast Bow Fixing, and killing them all. Kae got two or three low-level insects for her box, which she may or may not fill before the event ends, and they each got a Moonstone Box - if you open it you discover which grade of Moonstone is inside, though I think I'll settle for selling them as they are. The prices of the boxes, and the various new types of Moonstone, seem to be pretty high, assuming people actually do buy them...

After a nice relaxing food break, it was time for Darth to take the lead, so he moved over to the downstairs computer, while my level 24 rogue Karella went on the older one. Darth went to Prokion Temple and found the usual Orc Sergeant and Orc Axeman room, went as close to the wall there as possible, and Recalled Karella to join him, before starting to fight the orcs.

However, the skill point gain was still in single figures when Zenderfly logged on, offering to take Kee with her to explore the Forgotten Temple in Dratan, a place that I'd never been to. So I (relatively) swiftly changed to Kee, remembering to swap the accessories back from Kae, joined Zen's party, and got Recalled to the front entrance to the Temple.

Admission is free there, for a change, so in we went, to find a fairly large, well-proportioned place, as indeed befits a temple. I did remember to take a few screenshots along the way, which should appear on the latest gallery page at www.kaerella.com before too long!

Zen's theory was that, as the monsters there are level 65 to level 75, we might find a good place for skill point farming at level 70, but in the end she was not too impressed, the level 70-ish monsters like the Curd Hadian, Twin Hadian and Jumping Devil aren't there in great numbers, at least not close together, and they do hit pretty hard and die fairly slowly.

Zenderfly decided she wanted to solo the first boss we encountered, the level 73 Barren Eise, so I just watched, after putting up a Recall in case it hit harder than she could use healing pots - but she killed the great ugly thing nicely. Soloing it apparently removes 7 "evil" points, if you have slipped towards the red, I don't know if Zen needed that. The level 75 boss, the Blood Terrain, has an "area of effect" debuff which reduces one's attack power, but between us we dealt with him too.

The whole expedition took less than half an hour before Zen decided that the place wasn't really worth a prolonged slog - she logged off, though she did log back in later to say that she'd be on tomorrow for the evening, for maybe about three hours down in the Tomb of Theos. Kee went up 0.96%, gaining 153 pet points and 4 skill points. We didn't see any other players, the whole time we were in there, so it looks as if the place is living up to its name.

So, it was back to Darth and Karella for me, and Karella did actually level up, so is now wearing the new armour set's gloves, and using a level 29 +6 crossbow. Once she gets towards the top of level 25 it will be time to freeze her experience - after the main session she did have enough skill points to maximise the level 25 passive skill Regain (permanently increases regeneration rate of health and mana, 207 sp for all five levels), but some of the earlier passives, I see, are still a bit low.

As I'd noticed before, when Karella was right up against the wall she didn't actually increase her skill points as listed - but moving away from the wall made the figure jump up to what it should be. Darth did get a disconnection, but Karella picked up the healer shirt that he'd not had a chance to grab. It was awarded to Darth, and sure enough when I logged him back in, it had appeared in his inventory.

The usual room had been occupied, so SirDarth had ventured on into the back rooms this time, and discovered an equally good room right at the back, with plenty of the two best kinds of orc. A bigger room, which was useful! The fighting continued, after Darth had got back, and in the end he had made a total of 145 skill points today, passively with Kae earlier, and later doing the fighting with Karella sharing the benefits.

Let's see, SirDarth went up by 145 skill points... as Kaerella went up by 31, that probably means that Karella got 114 I guess, as they tend to share the skill exp equally. Karella is 80% of the way through level 25 now, so will need freezing pretty soon. If I do actually have ambitions to eventually have a good mid to high level rogue, a lot of skill point farming will be needed by her in Prokion Temple...so with her, SirDarth, and Enchantrella, not to mention Barbarienne, I will continue to see quite a lot of the place when Kee isn't off adventuring in more exotic locales with Zen.